Author
Topic: Capacity Dumping (Read 3768 times)

Well said. This is not Unreal Tournament where the goal is to kill your enemy under all circumstances.

That's news to me...

Anyway, with the slots being fixed and every slot that you competitor at the same base takes is one less slot left for you, and there is no benefit whatsoever (such as connecting traffic), all the incentives in place are to do exactly that - to try to kill the competitor and free up the slots.

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Curse

For myself I have no problem with one or two other smaller airlines at my hub. If the slots are gone the game has run some month... this is mostly the time I have massive profits and the game, the battle for money, has ended

Okay this thread has me thinking. I read the game rules and didn't remember the "targeting other airlines" part, but there it is. I am not sure if that is what I am doing or not. Air Ohio opened operations at my base airport (his home base also). I had ordered specific aircraft for a specific purpose. That being to fly all the short hops out of Cincinnati that I could. What I am doing could be perceived as "targeting" them, however, it is merely been the goal of my company for quite some time to fly these routes. I started out wanting to build a regional carrier. Unfortunately, in this game, this does not seem to be easy without being a larger airline first (due to staff costs, etc...), so I hope that I am not playing this simulation unfairly.

Orion

In this way there's a bit of an "honor system" involved that's difficult to actually control.

The question is -- are you opening the routes you always intended to, or are you specifically targeting just those that your competitor is operating on first?

One is clearly trying to take out the newer, smaller guy. The other is simply normal operating procedure of opening new routes.

I'm "going after" a guy at my base in MT2. He was, in fact, significantly larger than me for quite some time. I have slowly whittled away. Meanwhile other airlines have come into DFW and I have completely left them alone. They haven't survived long, but that's entirely their own doing, I didn't touch one plane, one route, or one price on anything they were flying.

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COUGAR

Anyway, with the slots being fixed and every slot that you competitor at the same base takes is one less slot left for you, and there is no benefit whatsoever (such as connecting traffic), all the incentives in place are to do exactly that - to try to kill the competitor and free up the slots.

Fair enough. if you are looking at this as a "game"... yes. the objective is "shoot them up". And i think that has what AWS is turning into: just another game site. Especially in the latest iteration.

Like it or not, targetting a new entrant is what happens all around: in the "Modern Times" scenario, the competition introduced routes 7 days after i did (these were unserved routes earlier). I cant see his fare levels (again not realistic) but even with unsustainable $50 fares my loads have crashed to less than 20%. which means he is clearly undercutting: objective again: to push out the new entrant.

With multiple hubs, the earlier entrants in the game get an unshakeable foothold being able to route aircraft at will and attack from multiple hubs. Even if i find a new "virgin" hub, my competition which has been in the market can create a new hub in my station overnight, while I have to twiddle my thumbs for a year by which time I will be dead. Is this realistic?

Thus it becomes impossible to enter ANY market after about 30% game play as all lucrative bases are taken up by then. In earlier iterations of AWS, the hub restriction ensured that some play was possible even late into the game. Now its impossible.

Multi-hubbing the way it has been introduced is not realistic and has only contributed to the general bloodbath. Lesson learned: after about 30% play, the game is effectively closed for new entrants.

ukatlantic

Okay this thread has me thinking. I read the game rules and didn't remember the "targeting other airlines" part, but there it is. I am not sure if that is what I am doing or not. Air Ohio opened operations at my base airport (his home base also). I had ordered specific aircraft for a specific purpose. That being to fly all the short hops out of Cincinnati that I could. What I am doing could be perceived as "targeting" them, however, it is merely been the goal of my company for quite some time to fly these routes. I started out wanting to build a regional carrier. Unfortunately, in this game, this does not seem to be easy without being a larger airline first (due to staff costs, etc...), so I hope that I am not playing this simulation unfairly.

Orion

My interpretation is that you should be ok provided you are not targeting every route the other guy if he is a 'younger' airline as that could be seen as an attempt to force him to either shut the routes or declare bankruptcy - I think what needs to happen is very clear black and white 'rules' of what you can and cannot do with anything going outside of those definitions becoming a breach and you ultimately pay the price for that breach.

COUGAR

@ukatlantic: I am not sure it will be possible for sami or anyone else to physically verify every single route operated by every airline.

I closely studied the operators in India, and deploying upto 200% or even WAY more than that seems to be the de-facto strategy now: kinda like marking territory. There are people here deploying 522 seats on a route that supports 120!

Sorry but instead "yelling" (not the right word but anyway .) it like that you should report them, IF there is something new from the previous of course. Otherwise there's nothing that can be done to enforce the rules since I don't know that someone is acting badly..

FYI, the user of that airline has not been online for a few days and he has thus not acted to the warning in the required timeframe, so I have closed a number of routes from him due to oversupply that exceeds the rule limits.

ucfknightryan

Like it or not, targetting a new entrant is what happens all around: in the "Modern Times" scenario, the competition introduced routes 7 days after i did (these were unserved routes earlier). I cant see his fare levels (again not realistic) but even with unsustainable $50 fares my loads have crashed to less than 20%. which means he is clearly undercutting: objective again: to push out the new entrant.

Assuming he's an older incumbent airline, I bet the low load factors have far more to do with his CI being much higher than yours + you still having fairly low route image + possibly him operating more frequently then you and very little to do with him undercutting you on price.

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gposey717

Same thing with me even though i started late some of my routes started with no competition such as mu flights from KEWR to MDT Air Atlantis is trying to kill my airlines every route i opened hes swampped the market to where i cant make a decent enough profit to sustain my airline

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GDK

Same thing with me even though i started late some of my routes started with no competition such as mu flights from KEWR to MDT Air Atlantis is trying to kill my airlines every route i opened hes swampped the market to where i cant make a decent enough profit to sustain my airline

That's what happening in almost every airport in AWS. Pity you guys...